While in Sydney, I was lucky enough to have have dined - and drunken - at “Cyren” on more than three occasions. The latest of which, back in August 2014, is the one that I will focus my recommendation about on for this review.
First of all, the restaurant may need a reservation if you are looking for a specific table with a view and or other requirements. Like many restaurants in the Darling Harbor area, it does get busy especially on Fridays and Saturdays. As I briefly mentioned in my previous review about Criniti’s, Cyren is another restaurant in the mall complex whereby fireworks on Saturday nights could be seen from your table - but again, make sure you go and reserve a table.
Secondly, the restaurant offers an extensive selection of grilled meats and seafood. This seems to be a trend with the majority of restaurants with western cuisine in the area. You could easily find at least five other places which would offer more or less the same dishes, with a few dollars difference in price. If you’re interested or did not get a table, Hard Rock cafe is right above Cyren.. and trust me it’s not a bad alternative.
For my latest feast at Cyren, we ordered half a dozen of oysters to begin our evening. The oysters were fresh, and were served very simply with the sauce we had asked some sandwich breads to soak up the seafood. No complains with the oysters as they were fresh as advertised and did not fail to live up to the claim.
We went straight to our main course after that since we were extremely starving. I was especially hungry, so I went for the pork ribs, full rack with mash potato on the side. I’m not sure if other people have also experienced this, but I feel that a full rack of pork ribs in France is usually quite small. The one I had that night at Cyren was gigantic, as you could clearly see from my photo. Taste wise it was good and well-executed, but nothing to further brag about. It was tender and the sauce that coated the meat was not overwhelmingly sweet. The mash was also delicious. I was really glad I had gone for the mash potato and not the average french fries.
My mother had chosen lamb chops, and had asked for them to be medium. When they arrived at the table, they were a level below medium for our liking. They were more like medium-rare, and was still quite raw. We’re not hardcore lamb eaters, but let’s just say we’ve had better cooked lamb chops for the specification. I would assume that they started to sear the lamb off on the pan before finishing it off in the oven, but when it got to the table, it wasn’t very warm. The mini salad / salsa that was under the meat was also not all that impressive. In comparison to the pork ribs that I had, the lamb chops were a few levels off, unfortunately.
By the time we finished our main course, we had no room for dessert. I did take a photo of the dessert menu to show my friend at the time, since the restaurant had left out one of my favourite dessert that they used to serve, a nutella, banana, ice cream calzone. I used to go to Cyren just for the dessert calzone so I was quite disappointed when it missed out on the menu in August. However they do have a nice selection of desserts, as I witnessed from the tables of my neighbors.
As it is in Darling Harbor with a fantastic view of the city, the price for the food and drink menus are quite high. It is by no means a restaurant that I would go to very often, as I do feel that there are better alternatives for pork ribs and steaks elsewhere for a much lower budget. As I said, I would recommend this place for its awesome location and cool ambience. You could do well to go try it out for a drink or two during happy hour and have a few snacks to go along with that.
